Sports

Bottineau girls combine to take third at Presidents Cup

By Bottineau Courant Staff

03/27/2012

Members of the Bottineau 19U girl’s hockey team combined with girls from Watford City, Langdon and Glasgow  competed in the Northern Plains Presidents Cup in Rapid City, S.D. March 16-18.

The Bottineau-led team took the cup title in 2011 for the first time.

Known as ND 3 in the six-team tournament in 2012, the girls from Bottineau were undefeated, but managed to capture only a third place finish.

That’s because ND 3 skated to a 1-1 tie in pool play of the tournament against ND 2, which consists of player from Bismarck, Wahpeton, Mayport and Richland.
Natalie Bahr, from Bottineau 19U, scored the lone goal in the game. She was assisted on the play by Katie Skarda.

Jacie Ceglowski, also from Bottineau 19U, stopped 14-of-15 shots in the tie, as ND 3 out shot ND 2, 41-15.
The tie was the middle of three round-robin pool play games, and after the girls won their other two contests in pool play, a tiebreaker pushed them into the third place contest.

ND 2, who thanks to the tiebreaker, fell to Team South Dakota in the title game.

In ND 3’s first pool play game on March 16, they used a one-goal advantage in the second period to come away with a 6-5 win over eventual champion South Dakota.

Again a heavy shot advantage benefited ND 3. They out shot South Dakota 32-22.

Bottineau 19U’s Ashley Blue scored five of the six goals for ND 3 as they marched past South Dakota.
South Dakota’s Hannah Booth had a hat trick in the loss, but Blue was too much for SD as she hit the game-winner with 1:29 left in the final frame.

Blue also assisted on ND 3’s second goal scored by Skarda. Skarda added an assist on Blue’s third goal. Also assisting on Blue goals were: Bahr and Tayler Dwyer.

Ceglowski stopped 17 of 22 shots in the win.

The final pool play game for ND 3 ended in a 4-0 shut out of Gillette thanks to a sensational performance in net by Ceglowski.

Ceglowski stopped all 10 scoring tries from Gillette in the win, including two power play tries.

Blue and Skarda provided the fire power for ND 3 as Skarda scored a pair and Blue hit the game-winner in the first period.

Also scoring for ND 3 was Debra Greibel, Dwyer notched one of her two assists in the game on the goal.

ND 3 once again had a big shot advantage, out shooting Gillette 39-10.

ND 3, and the girls from Bottineau, played for third place on March 18.

After another shootout the Bottineau girls took some revenge from the state tournament as they beat members of the Fargo state tourney team in the 7-5 win.

The game was offensive in many aspects, but ND 3 overcame eight penalties to charge past the ND 1 team.

Skarda hit the game-winner in the second period with 2:32 to go on an unassisted marker.

Blue notched four more goals in the game. That brought her tournament total to 10.

Other ND 3 goals came from Bottineau girl’s Tiffany Schuster and Baily Neubauer. Nebauer, along with Karlee McCloud and Shelby Pedie (both of Bottineau) also added assisted in the game for ND 3.

Alex Woken scored four of ND 1’s five goals and assisted on the other in the loss.

Ceglowski stopped 25-of-30 shots and survived eight ND 1 power plays to help ND 3 capture a third place finish.

Bottineau 19U made up 11 of the 20 girls on the Bottineau-Watford City-Langdon-Glasgow team.